


Weary Memory

by bashert



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 06:22:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bashert/pseuds/bashert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It started with Mackenzie running into a rig before the show one Thursday night.  She had a dazed look on her face as her hand flew to her forehead and she blinked in surprise when it came back covered in blood."</p><p>After their engagement, Will discovers he's not Mackenzie's emergency contact and wonders why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weary Memory

**Author's Note:**

> I started to write something totally different and this came spilling out instead. I wrote it half drunk on cough syrup, so I’m a little nervous about it, but I figured what the hell, I’d post it anyway (that’s probably still the influence of the cough syrup, wondrous stuff that it is). The title comes from Iron and Wine, and let me know what you thought. Thanks!

It started with Mackenzie running into a rig before the show one Thursday night.  She had a dazed look on her face as her hand flew to her forehead and she blinked in surprise when it came back covered in blood.  
  
"Jesus, Mac!" Will exclaimed, scrambling out of his chair and around the front of the desk.

“Ouch,” she said belatedly, and then her face screwed up in pain. “No, seriously, _shit_ that hurt.”

“I think you need stitches,” Jim announced coming up behind Will and handing Mac a towel which she pressed to her head with a hiss. Maggie hovered a step behind Jim, her mouth drawn in a tight line.

“I’ll take you,” Will insisted.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Mac shot back. “You’re on the air in less than three minutes.”

“Fuck that,” he answered immediately.

“I can take you,” Maggie offered.

“See, sit your ass down and do the show, Maggie will take me, and Jim will fill in for me,” with her free hand Mac pointed to his chair. Will sighed, but recognized the futility of arguing with her, so instead he leaned in and gave her a soft kiss. He frowned at the blood already soaking through the towel Mac was still holding against her head.

“You’ll text me and let me know what’s going on?” Will asked, and Mac nodded and Maggie hustled her out of the studio and Will sat down to distractedly do the show. At the first break, his phone beeped with a text from his fiancée letting him know that she and Maggie were still waiting in the emergency room to be seen and that she had commandeered the television in the corner to watch the show.

 _So don’t fuck up too badly,_ she wrote.

The moment the broadcast ended, he ripped out the earpiece and charged out of the office, Jim on his heels.

Mac was finally being seen when they stormed into the emergency room, and Will went to the desk and demanded information.

“I can’t just release patient details,” the nurse explained apologetically.

“I’m her fiancée, I’m her emergency contact,” Will insisted.

“Actually, a James Harper is listed as her emergency contact,” the nurse replied, and Will turned to glare at Jim as if this was his fault. Jim’s eyes widened.

“That’s me,” Jim said waving his hand a little bit. “Could you please tell us where she is? Before he has an aneurism?” He jerked his thumb over towards Will and the nurse gave them an exam room number and Will pounded down the hallway towards where she had directed. Mac was sitting on a gurney, her head bandaged, talking quietly with Maggie when the two men came tumbling in. Will went immediately to her side and Jim dropped into the empty chair next to Maggie.

“Hi honey,” Mac said, looking up at Will. “They’ve successfully stitched me up and now we’re just waiting for them to take me for a CT scan, which I think is an overreaction.”

“It’s not,” Will answered bluntly. “You fucking bashed your head open. At the very least you have a concussion.” Mac rolled her eyes, but twined her fingers with Will’s. He picked up their joined hands and brushed a kiss along her knuckles. The nurse came to get Mac a few minutes later, and the other three sat in the empty exam room waiting for her to come back. When she was wheeled back in, she was given a diagnosis of a fairly bad concussion and a list of symptoms for Will to watch out for, and then released into his care.

When they arrived back at their newly shared apartment, Mac changed into a pair of leggings and an old t-shirt of Will’s, her body heavy and her head pounding. She groaned a little as Will pressed a light kiss to her temple and reminded her that he had to wake her up every so often as a precaution.

“Can’t we skip that one? I’m exhausted,” she complained, and Will ignored her. He settled into bed next to her with a book, and she let out a long sigh and was about to close her eyes when he spoke up.

“Can I ask a question?” He asked. “Why is Jim your emergency contact?” That surprised her, and she sat up, wincing a little at the movement, which Will caught and immediately regretted bringing it up. “I’m sorry, we can talk about this later. You should sleep.”

“I forgot that Jim was my emergency contact, to be honest, I’ll have to change it,” she answered honestly.

“When did you change it the first time?” Will asked. It occurred to him that this was a silly line of questioning. Of course she would have changed it during those years where he _wasn’t even speaking to her_ , but the truth was that he changed his back to her four months after she appeared in the newsroom again. He wasn’t even sure why he was doing it at the time, but even deep in his denial he knew that if something happened, he’d want her there. (And he _had_ wanted her there. He might have been a grade A pain in the ass when he was in the hospital, and outwardly unappreciative of the fact that she sat in that uncomfortable chair at his bedside for far longer than an ex-girlfriend, even one who was also a co-worker, had any obligation to, but it meant so much that she was there, that she _stayed_.) 

“I changed it when I was in Peshawar,” she said carefully. “I didn’t…if something happened, I didn’t want you to feel obligated to come. I knew I was probably the last person you wanted to think about.” And something _had_ happened. She had been stabbed. He had seen the scar, a faint and puckered line the stretched near her belly button, but she had been adamant at the time that no one call Will unless the worst had happened, and she had only had Jim contact Charlie because it was about to hit the wires and she didn’t want Will to find out that way.

“Call Charlie Skinner at ACN, he’ll tell Will. Please, Jim, don’t tell him it’s serious. Downplay it,” she had insisted, delirious from pain and blood loss, but still so clear and certain on that point. Jim, sweet Jim, who had carried her bloody and broken body through the streets, had tried to ineffectively argue with her, but acquiesced. He would walk through fire for her, and he owed Will McAvoy nothing, so it wasn’t that hard of a compromise.

When Jim made that phone call to Charlie Skinner, he had explained that Mackenzie had been attacked during a religious protest (he made sure he didn’t use the word _stabbed_ , even though she had been stabbed and had almost fucking _died_ , but the woman was stubborn and forceful even from a bed in an overcrowded military hospital in Islamabad, and Jim was following her instructions to the letter), and that it was going to come down the wires and she thought someone should warn Will before that happened.

“Is she going to be okay?” Charlie asked, stunned.

“Oh, yeah,” Jim forced a nonchalance that he didn’t feel. Not standing there with shouts still echoing outside and Mac’s blood still staining his clothes. She still wasn’t exactly _stable,_ but Jim had made a promise to her and he was going to keep it. “She’s going to be fine.” He swallowed hard, and hoped, God he hoped, that it wasn’t a lie.

The first time Will saw her naked after their engagement, he had frowned slightly at the scar. He had her body memorized, and that was new.

“Where’d you get that?” He asked pressing a kiss to it.

“Souvenir from my time embedded,” she explained, putting a finger under his chin and tilting it upwards to look at her. “You know about it, I’m sure Charlie told you.”

Will looked thoughtful for a minute, remembering Charlie coming into his office on a Tuesday and saying words like Mackenzie and attacked and Middle East, but he had only focused on the part where Charlie said she would be okay, and he had quickly pushed her back to the corners of his mind so that he could continue to function. Will had looked up the news reports, but all it had said was that a CNN reporter, Mackenzie McHale, had been injured in a religious protest in Islamabad and that she was in stable condition.

“Oh right,” he had said, coming up to kiss her. “Charlie didn’t know many details though.” Even as he said it, he wondered how that could have been, Charlie knew _everything_.

“Not much to tell,” Mac said shrugging. “The protest got a little out of hand and I was caught in the middle.” She had a practiced indifference about it, and it had even slightly rubbed off on Jim who could say it like it wasn’t a big thing, “Mac was stabbed in Islamabad.” Like he hadn’t sat trembling in the waiting room, his hand gripping a satellite phone given to him by one of the soldiers who told him that maybe he should call Mac’s parents so they could be prepared.

“For what?” Jim had asked dumbly. Like the doctor hadn’t come out and told Jim it was a miracle that Mac hadn’t bled out.

Now, sitting there, with a gash on her forehead and a ring on her finger, Mac is surprised to see that Will is hurt that she had changed her emergency contact, even though her reasoning was sound and she had been trying to protect _him_ and his feelings.

“I would have come,” he said. “I’m not that much of an asshole.” He frowned slightly.

“I know that,” Mac said defensively. “I was trying to protect you.” Her head felt fuzzy and the pain killers were kicking in, and this was not the time to have this conversation, but they were having it anyway. “I didn’t want you to worry or feel guilty. I know how you get sometimes, like things that are in no way your fault are your fault, and it _wasn’t,_ so I thought if I didn’t make it through the surgery it would be better if you only knew about it after.” Will’s eyes widened.

“Surgery?” He asked, his voice low. His eyes darted down to where the scar was hidden under the t-shirt, and he was so damn smart, sometimes she hated that he was so damn smart, because she could see the wheels turning. “What _happened_ in Islamabad?”

“Will,” she tried.

“Mackenzie, I’m not fucking around, what happened?”

“I was stabbed,” she said in a small voice. Saying it transported her back to the dusty, hot city, the feel of the warm pavement and the tinny smell of her blood as Jim dropped to his knees next to her, grabbing her hand where it was ineffectively scrabbling at her stomach and the look on his face told her how bad it was. “It was…it wasn’t good. I lost a lot of blood and Jim, Jesus without _Jim_ , he got me to a hospital before I bled out.”

“How did I not know about this?” Will’s voice was incredulous, and he was vacillating between feeling like he wanted to shake her for keeping this from him and wanting to pull her into his arms to reassure himself that she was all right.

“I didn’t want you to know,” Mac admitted. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you knowing and not caring or not…I _know_ that you would have cared, Will, but I was bleeding and in pain and I wasn’t thinking clearly. I asked Jim to call Charlie because I thought it would hit the wires and I didn’t want you to find out that way. I asked him to make it seem like it wasn’t a very big deal.”

“But I read the news reports! No where did it say you were _stabbed_ , Mackenzie,” Will said fiercely. “I would have fucking remembered that.” He threw the covers off and stood, crossing his arms tightly over his chest.

“My father pulled some strings,” Mac answered. “He tried to keep my name out of it all together, but he didn’t manage that. He was trying to protect my privacy.” He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “Will, please understand.”

“You should get sleep,” he said flatly.

“Will,” her voice broke on his name.

“You almost died,” he finally said, his arms dropping limply to his sides. “And I didn’t know. I had no idea.” He deflated at that point, dropping down onto the bed. She only hesitated a moment before she ran a hand over his back and scooted forward so that she was next to him.

“You’re allowed to be angry at me for keeping this from you, and I’ll tell you anything you want or need to know,” she said softly. “But I promise you, while I did do it because of self-preservation and for selfish reasons; I was also doing it for you. I had hurt you, and I didn’t deserve your concern.”

“Yes, you did,” he said firmly.

“I didn’t think I did,” she amended. “And I’m sorry. Maybe if I had let Jim call you, or not changed my emergency contact, or a _thousand_ other things, maybe things would be different, but I didn’t, and they aren’t.” She rested her head against his shoulder and tangled her hand in his, and was relieved when he didn’t pull away. Instead Will dropped a kiss to the top of her head.

“You really do need to get some sleep,” he said. “I want to talk about this more. I want to know what happened, all the details, and I want you to change your emergency contact tomorrow. I don’t want anything to happen to you, period, but I’ll be damned if something else happens and I’m the last to know about it.” She nodded, her body so tired and worn that it took all the energy she had to give him one last kiss and crawl back under the covers, asleep before Will even turned around.

He went back into the living room, shutting off the lights in the bedroom and taking a look at the clock so he knew when to shake her awake again in a couple of hours. Will poured himself a stiff drink and settled down into a chair, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. There were going to be long talks, and he knew that. He knew that there was a lot of pain and hurt from those years when they were apart, and there were plenty of things that they still needed to work though, and he was angry with her for keeping this from him, and he was angry with himself for a whole host of reasons that didn’t all make total rational sense. But that could all be shelved for tomorrow. For now, he was going to finish his drink, climb into bed, and pull his fiancée to him and thank whatever deity was listening that she was there, safe, solid, warm and next to him.

He took a long drink and stood, before reaching for his phone and typing out a message to Jim, hitting send as he padded back down the hall to Mackenzie.

_It’s a few years overdue, but I owe you everything, kid. You’re a good man, Jim Harper. Thanks for taking care of her._


End file.
